what is going on in your musical life

thanks! i think i'll try and do a couple more things in this vein and then throw it all up on bandcamp

yeah, you should! love the little thunderstorm breakdown at around 3:00 in the dub track

Pretty cool stuff. The first one sounds like FSOL a bit.

ok so sitting at my desk all day is a bit much: but on the plus side, now, along with listening to NA's organ stuff I have listened to Karl's bouncy ditty- not my thing but I do really like the painting! - and watched ll's drum thing on youtube (at least I think I did, as I don't actually know anyone here irl- but how many solo female drum things could there be in the Quarantine concerts?)- it was cool. Liked when the other instruments came in (virtually? or recorded?) and it got kind of Neu-ey. Had it on in the background while I worked, occasionally flipping to youtube to have a watch.

that was me! the other instruments were early recordings i made (with n/a and ilxor tarfumes) remotely and so i thought it was appropriate to play them for a quarantine/isolation themed series. i haven't been playing that long (7 years in June) and this was my first time ever playing for a camera/webcast type situation. (also my first time ever being broadcast doing anything, now that i think about it) i got over the fear of cameras by only having like 18 hours to prepare for this thing.

thank you for listening!

xp thanks for taking the time all the same, Tib! it's kinda funny because it's typically not really my own thing either. i feel like i listen to 99% ambient and weird instrumental jams, yet when i hit record i often end up trying to write a Beths song (the other 1% of my music listening, i guess).

creative outlets often act like emotional converters or funnels, i think, by which i mean they can focus the creators attention on emotions or moods that don't otherwise seem to be prominent. i feel like i'm often pretty lighthearted or silly irl, for example, but whenever try to sit down and invest time in writing (prose or narratively, i mean), suddenly i'm just like "the only thing i can write about is death and how to prepare for death", or whatever. the joy of life goes out the window. that's kind of a weird example, but i think a similar thing can apply to other emotions and mediums, in surprising ways. i feel so morose when i try to seriously write, and when i paint (in brief experience) i find myself feeling strangely calm and accepting. not in a new age way, but in a "i will just paint this corner of a house with shingles. i will just focus the little shadow shingles. it's enough to do just that" way, which is not at ALL how i go through my normal daily life. and with music i guess it's often a nervousness that feels more true to my inner self.

not sure where i was going with all that, but curious how others draw connections between their music and their emotions, particularly wrt different genres (e.g., when i'm focusing on writing instrumental music to accompany a video or animation i made, it comes out sounding very differently, and I *feel* very different as i'm making it, like i'm a different musician with a contradictory perspective)

You know, I always wrote lyrics on personal topics, but decided in the last several years or so that I didn't want to anymore. I actually wrote a couple of sets of lyrics that were fictional, just based on some historical things that were of interest to me. And I was happy with them. More recently, I've been able to finish some things with more impressionistic lyrics. I had tried that before, but never succeeded.

i think of my musical voice as a voice i can use to express whatever i want -- it changes but whatever comes out of me is "my voice"
i don't feel pressure to have it match my irl personality at all
that is part of what i love about making music? that sort of freedom to say whatever i want. i have yet to use words to do this but maybe someday.

this has definitely been a big obstacle keeping me from writing any song songs anymore. i used to be ok with shutting off that concern and writing lyrics that were abstract or about something small or dumb but now i'm immediately like "WHAT do i need to SAY about the WORLD" and so my solution has been not writing songs at all any more

which is dumb because i've never been someone who writes personal songs (only rarely) or creates art to process my feelings. making art of any kind has always been more of an intellectual exercise or a way to zone out and not think, combined with the satisfaction of producing something concrete. so i don't know why i feel this pressure now. probably some combination of getting older and being more in touch with my feelings and the world feeling more desperate and the scarcity of my musical production making it feel like what i do produce has to be particularly meaningful

i think of my musical voice as a voice i can use to express whatever i want -- it changes but whatever comes out of me is "my voice"
i don't feel pressure to have it match my irl personality at all

oh me, neither! what i meant to express was that i think it's interesting how sometimes creative process kind of automatically self-selects for certain aspects of a personality, depending the medium or the project. that may be just a subjective or personal thing, but i was just curious if others felt like that too. if anything, i think i especially enjoy working on projects that let me explore aspects of my personality or emotions that i don't normally get to use in every day life.

i used to be ok with shutting off that concern and writing lyrics that were abstract or about something small or dumb but now i'm immediately like "WHAT do i need to SAY about the WORLD" and so my solution has been not writing songs at all any more

yeah, i stopped writing with lyrics (or at least produced much, much less) for several years (late 20s to a couple years ago) for a similar concern. i suddenly felt so bad and embarrassed, like anything i could possibly say is terrible and irrelevant. plus you have incidents like when turrican listened to an ilxors song lyrics and made fun of them, which is like the amateur songwriter's worst nightmare. in my mind, every listener was turrican, just waiting to pounce on something and criticize. but i guess where it's different is that you're saying more broadly that anything you could say about the world wouldn't be meaningful to others (which is not right! just gotta throw that in there!), whereas i was hung up on feeling incapable of producing something that would be meaningful to others.

it is all very weird, and perhaps in a couple years i'll feel ashamed that i shared my new songs with lyrics. but i hope not, because when other people share something that is revealing, i always think more of them, never less, even when i don't like the music much! i'm just kind of like "i appreciate that you care about this." dunno, it's hard to explain. i go back and forth between shame and sharing, but i generally feel better when i'm sharing.

oh me, neither!
oh, me neither!

i meant the latter!

Yeah a lot of this conversation resonates with me, and putting it in these contexts made me think about my responses above as a listener (and as someone listening who also makes) and i think that personal thing in your song Karl is amplified not only by the fragility of your voice but by the very "here is a song" 3+ mins long, standing alone- in comparison to 2 lengthy organ pieces or LL's drumming. These two I can let drift over me, engage with them in focused listening or just in the background - but an individual song presented in the way yours was kind of asks "listen to me closely, because I will stop soon." Whereas I think if it was 30 mins of songs with that dreamy jangle and I could actually approach it as I did with the other two???

exactly! i feel like i know exactly what you mean by that! and for similar reasons i think that's why the majority of my listening consists of things i can walk away from and not feel like i'm missing something.

in a slightly different way, i think that i could just quickly scroll through 20 different finished product paintings and think "nope. nope. nope. nope." as i went, but if there was a recording of someone painting those same compositions, or was just presented less as a final "thing" and more like "this is what the thing is like, sort of, as it comes into being" i'd be way more interested and would watch for much longer. (maybe i'm off on that - i'm not even sure what i mean by that, but it seems right)

one more thing that seems relevant: what's interesting to me is that when i go about writing a shorter, 3-minute-esque "song", it will take me forever. the fact that is has a clear beginning and ending and that there will be repetitive elements of the song that are recognizable even during the first listen, leads to so much more attention being paid to it, compositionally. whereas when i record longer things, i'm so much more open to letting the "performance" of it stand, warts and all.

the reason i mention that i think there's an interesting difference between the two compositional forms in terms of how they represent the raw music that's inside of everyone. the shorter structured song brings out the obsessive, foreground conscious decisionmaking, while the longer forms seem more primordial and real in some ways.

(i recognize that's not true of everyone - some people really, REALLY labor over super long drone recordings in the same way that someone is sitting there chewing on a pencil's eraser trying to figure out a better inflection for the last syllable of a two-verse song, while others (robert pollard?) seem to just crank out short-length songs without worry

...more like "this is what the thing is like, sort of, as it comes into being"

yeah this interests me as a maker/player in terms of music too and its the main reason this board is so nice. I lurk a lot (because hah,I usually think anything i could say about the world wouldn't be meaningful or maybe yeah feeling incapable of producing something that would be meaningful to others0 and just find the smallness and openness in terms of process, sharing, approach here rewarding to read and occasionally join.

Anyone try this thing yet?

https://www.jamkazam.com/products/platform

no but it’s very interesting — I’d try it!

https://endlesss.fm/

this just launched yesterday too

ok keen to hear experiences?

id give it a go but i'm me

bandcamp page for my weird organ music - https://cutternumbers.bandcamp.com/

sounds great! your organ is awesome. I love how each of the three has a very different sound, too.

yeah i am listening while i try to focus on a very boring task and it's making me feel like i am hurtling through space while i do it
into it!

thanks!

it's weird how when i do song-oriented stuff i'm pretty confident about knowing when i've made something worthwhile or good but when i do more experimental/formless stuff i have so little confidence in it, despite having listened to that kind of stuff for a long time and played versions of it for a while too.

your organ is awesome

ahem

NA I'm listening to your organ record and I figured it would be, y'know, cool and all, but it's REALLY good.

thank you!

enjoyed this

its such...so good.

i mean just sgo ood

Emily, I'm still listening to your wonderful SoL record lots, and enjoy singing along :) Bought it yesterday. My gf said it reminds her heavily of The Au-Pairs, which is meant as a big compliment!

I soldered for the first time ever, a new 9v terminal on a vintage Fender Blender fuzz I bought not working from a pawn shop and let sit for two years.

Oh, LBI, I missed your post, thank you so much!

I've been writing and performing/recording jingles with my wife and kids for her read-aloud series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DfCOUCNdI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bEvrhEYtos

I mostly finished a stompy ambient track in ableton, re-learning how to do everything all over again

DJI those are fantastic! Are the full stories up too? Is this a storytime in the time of COVID-19 thing?

Thanks, Tib! We had fun making them. My wife is an elementary school librarian so she’s been doing these for the lockdown.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FickdaZZygo


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ouZKrOwpHE

Thanks. These are good. I've seen some really bad ones! Usually when the book is tiny and held in the hands of someone too far away from the camera.

I do think the voice audio could be a bit louder on the reading in the sideways story one though.

i listened to all of the sideways chapters (parts 1-3, I mean). i used to adore that book when i was a kid - haven't read it since

among others, the one that really stuck with me is the chapter about the student who keeps tightening his tie, and keeps looking better and better and getting compliments every time he does it, until he can no longer breathe. i really do think about that story all the time

New single came out Friday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-dls67jTU8

And also, my wife and I made a theme song for the Apocalypse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVpyLf8H3LM

Have been reluctant to out myself, but whilst my Working Stiff Old Man Student Jazz Band is on hiatus I have been taking Skype guitar lessons from Sund4r to work on my finger picking and such and it is really helping a lot. He is as good a teacher as one would expect: really organized, calm, focused and clear and, as you know, he knows a ton about the guitar and all kinds of music.

Ha, glad it helps!

As I’ve gotten back into making tracks under quarantine, I’ve also slipped back into staying up until almost 3am with my headphones on.

Just listened to a couple of tracks I made with my dinky rig from 1998 or so (in the college radio station’s newsroom, over the summer when nobody was using it, and I was the program director so I had one of the keys) and remembered why it is that I really like having my unbothered hours late at night to fiddle around. Now if only I had PROPER gear back then, etc

amen brother

So many good ideas, mixed like shit on weak monitor setups, with no multiplex compression

NO TIME TO DWELL ON THE PASHT

I need to figure out Acapella tonight so I can record myself singing a 4-part a capella arrangement of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" I put together yesterday for Sunday's church service.

I was the recording engineer for this piece last summer. The composer put it out on Youtube now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbzv1XYzDw8&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1RrQEpt5gB4-0PFYb-4MAFYwoZjSPUNM36-FBoqIPe19kEAcXgyoguGpc

https://youtu.be/Nbzv1XYzDw8